November 18, 2004

Multidetector CT scans, a new way to diagnose heart disease that takes only seconds and provides pictures so clear they show every clogged artery, may revolutionize cardiology.

At a cost of about $700, it can largely replace invasive, $4,000 diagnostic angiograms. In a CT scan, X-rays pass through the heart and are picked up by detectors that send information to a computer that constructs an image. The new multidetector… read more

November 17, 2004

Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman M.D. has been published by Rodale Books. It explains how advances in genomics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology have brought the possibility of immortality within our grasp.

The book describes three bridges to the future that can lead to longer, healthier lives:

November 16, 2004

“Life, the universe and everything” may be no more than a giant computer simulation with humans reduced to bits of software, says Martin Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, in a forthcoming BBC television documentary.

Countering this, MIT professor Seth Lloyd said such a computer would have to be unimaginably large.

November 16, 2004

New treatments for patients could be found by a computer program that can “read” thousands of clinical papers in minutes. Use of this AI software has already resulted in a new treatment for heart disease based on an anti­psychotic drug.

Developed by scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the IRIDESCENT program uses data-mining techniques to discover potential new uses for existing therapies.

November 15, 2004

Indian researchers are developing real-time translation between spoken languages, using a combination of audio signal processing, speech-to-text conversion, AI processing, and text-to-speech conversion to generate the translation.

The researchers also plan to develop real-time lookup of Internet information in any language by 2010.

November 15, 2004

The Pentagon is building its own secure Internet, the Global Information Grid, or GIG. The first connections for the system were installed six weeks ago, but it could take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build the network and its components.

The system’s goal is to give American commanders and troops a moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats.

November 12, 2004

A SETI Institute scientist proposes to perform the classic double-slit experiment over astronomical distances to demonstrate that quantum effects are not just microscopic phenomena, but can be extended across the cosmos.

November 11, 2004

A device that automatically moves electrodes through the brain to seek out the strongest signals promises to overcome loss of electrode sensitivity and help people who are paralyzed or unable to communicate.

The researchers say that within a year they expect to be able to fit a paralyzed person with an “autonomous microdrive” implant that will allow them to control a computer cursor and navigate the web.

November 11, 2004

November 11, 2004

Two teams of scientists have entangled light and matter inside a solid for the first time.

The teams both use holes inside the semiconductor material gallium arsenide to house a quantum dot. A laser pulse directed at the dot jolts it into spitting out a particle of light, which is entangled with both the quantum dot and the electric field of the cavity itself.